RIP: Cedar Walton, hard bop jazz pianist and composer

Hard bop pianist/composer Cedar Walton, who played with John Coltrane, Art Blakey, Freddie Hubbard, Abbey Lincoln, and a host of hardbop greats, died this morning, according to this report from WBGO’s The Checkout. The Dallas, Texas native was 79.

Hey you, moaning sleepless in your bed because you don’t have a Cabaret Voltaire box set amongst all your Human League, Throbbing Gristle, Fad Gadget, and The Normal paraphernalia to show your devotion to late-70s electronic UK post-punk music? Put down the Ambien, because the experimental Sheffield lads are here to make all your dreams come true. ESPECIALLY if all your dreams are about dancing to the wee hours on ‘ludes and other weird 80s drugs at a sexy disco in hell.

Behold! The magickal witches at Mute Records have conjured up only the finest in Cabaret Voltaire box set offerings: a 6CD/4LP/2DVD box set called #8385 (Collected Works 1983-1985) that’s due November 5, mere days after the spooooookiest day of the year! The box set includes remastered tracks from the band’s four mid-period releases: The Crackdown, Micro-Phonies, Drinking Gasoline, and The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord, plus a CD recording of the band’s 12-inch tracks from the era and yet another CD recording of unreleased tracks called Earthshaker. As for the DVDs, the first is Cabaret Voltaire Live, which presents two 1984 performances at the Bedford Boys Club and at the Hammersmith Palais, respectively, and the other, Gasoline in Your Eye, is a reissue of a previously VHS-only 1985 release that included four promotional videos. Ahh the magic of the box set!

Naturally, you also get a really long (40 pages) booklet, with notes about Earthshaker, sleeve notes by founding member Richard H. Kirk, and an essay by Phil Barnes. Then in early 2014, Mute Records will release #7885 (Electro Punk to Techno Pop 1978 - 1985), a box set of Katy Perry’s earliest home demos. JK — it’s a compilation of an even LONGER era in the Cabaret Voltaire discography.

Questionable is the notion of trip-hop’s existence in the 2010s, but a listen to Lucrecia Dalt’s sophomore album Commotus just prior to the writing of this article couldn’t help but inspire a mild reminiscence of the genre’s heyday around the early-to-mid-90s. To be sure, as my colleague Birkut points out in his review of the album, the influences are numerous, and the Badalamenti qualities ever-present, but I personally hear a soulful fragility that otherwise came to define that particular genre, until people brought in associations with Björk and DJ Shadow that made me ultimately go “WTF” at the genre’s mutating definition. Still, right away with the opener “Saltación,” I’m reminded that emotional vulnerability and coolness can often go hand in hand. In fact, you’re probably less cool if you don’t cry about things, I’ve just now decided.

Commotus brought a personal excitement, because while it was or is certainly a worthwhile listen, full potential didn’t feel like it had yet been met. For that, we can possibly look to Dalt’s next LP Syzygy, out October 15 via Human Ear Music. Filmic influences and a general depth of thought were made clear, among other sources, in a personal introduction to an exclusive Choco mix for TMT, and so continues the method. “Swirling complex themes,” as a press release puts it, see their origins in texts by Walter Benjamin and Italo Calvino, and in films by Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman. Muted emotion would appear to be the feature here, however.

It’s been nearly five years since Juana Molina released the superb Un Día (TMT Review). In the interim, the Argentine songstress did her first full band tour of the US and, well, not much else in the English-speaking world.

Apparently, her hiding spot was at home. For the past few years, she’s been holed up in her Buenos Aires studio working on new stuff. The fruits of her labor will be available on October 28 when Crammed Discs releases Wed 21. She’s been busy creating a true one woman show, composing, performing, recording, and producing the record on her own. In order to satiate your craving for some of her new material, those fine folks were kind enough to drop a SoundCloud link with the song “Eras.” Move your eyes slightly downward and you can see that I was nice enough to include that in this article so you wouldn’t have to use your best Google-Fu to find it:

Like most of her work, “Eras” is pretty heavily layered. You have a bunch of different types of percussion and string instruments working to create an expansive but focused sound, sort of the thing she’s known for. Noticeably present is the use of electric guitar. While I’m not sure if this is exactly the first time she’s used electric guitar, it is something of a departure as Molina mainly works with acoustic ones. The new record will actually see her incorporating more more electric and electronic instrumentation into her songs than her previous work, expanding on what was already a ridiculously textured sound.

In addition to the record, she’ll be touring Europe in November before taking some time off and going on an extensive tour in 2014.

While you patiently wait for her to hit your city, take a look at the Wed 21 tracklist:

Light in the Attic Records releases a lot of magical, forgotten reissues. It’s easy to imagine a herd of well-coiffed Lisa Frank unicorns answering the phone there, sorting out rights to obscure 7-inch releases, and laughing at memes on the Unicorn Internet while Witch Interns get them fancy lattes. And maybe now that’s not so far from the truth, because Light in the Attic is boldly daring to go where very few super-cool indie labels have really ever gone before: giving props to New Age music.

This ain’t your mom’s Yanni Best Of or one of those ocean waves CDs you can get from Target and preview on a display. This has organs and drones and weird experimental shit, ladies and gentlewarlocks: welcome to I Am the Center: Private Issue New Age Music in America 1950-1990. The 2CD or 3LP release showcases analog, handmade, weirdo recordings that wouldn’t be out of place at an experimental music festival in some cool Eastern European city (KRAKOW *cough cough*, you know you’re cool). Plus a lot of the tracks have awesome/ridiculous names like “The Struggle of the Magicians part three,” or “Witch’s Will,” or my new life theme song from Brian Eno/Blues Control collaborator Laraaji, “Unicorns in Paradise.” Fun fact: one of the tracks on here, Gail Laughton’s “Pompeii 76 AD” was on the Blade Runner soundtrack. I Am the Center is available on October 29.

I Am the Center: Private Issue New Age Music in America 1950-1990 tracklisting:

Following the path blazed by the indomitable Darius Rucker of Hootie & the Blowfish fame, earlier this month Richard Youngs announced he would be releasing his first country album, entitled Summer through My Mind. Many prominent voices in the imaginary blogosphere in my head wondered if this might indicate a permanent shift in Youngs’ approach before going on to encourage me to engage in risky behavior and steal things from my roommates.

Well, prominent voices, now you have your answer! Youngs has announced yet another full-length LP for 2013 (apparently he wants to release as much music as possible before he becomes Richard Olds). Regions of the Old School is a double LP out from MIE, and it steps back from the pastoral descriptions of God, country, and pickup trucks of Youngs’ brief “country phase.” Instead, it offers five sprawling songs with an ambitious array of instrumentation, from hand drums and gongs to the shakuhachi flute and synthesizer contributions from Neil Campbell. Out October 15 in the US and September 23 in the rest of the world, the album arrives in a limited run of 500 gatefold LPs with artwork by Madeleine Hynes (who also contributes guest vocals to the album). The album is distributed in the United States by Revolver USA and around the world by Morr Music.

Youngs is also touring North America starting in September. Though I continue to refuse to believe that calendars are a “real thing,” I’ve posted the dates below anyway, just for a laugh. I mean, what the hell, right? It’s the internet!